


Grass

by Grasshunter



Category: Bumblebee (2018), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Recovery, referenced suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24675538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grasshunter/pseuds/Grasshunter
Summary: Charlie starts to heal.
Relationships: Bumblebee/Charlie Watson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 47





	Grass

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts since Bumblebee came out lol
> 
> The songs Charlie is listening to are the first two tracks off XTC's Skylarking, one of my favourite albums of all time. Listen to them here, if you like. https://youtu.be/sYbGugKvy1o

Outside Charlie’s bedroom window, the sun blazes white on a bright summer sky and paints everything in supersaturated hues: shadows are sketched in too-dark blacks, and the edges of everything sharpen harshly under the heavy humidity of July’s heat wave. Charlie was sure that, at some point, Mom would start the afternoon with the same irritating complaints about the heat she did every year, grating in their repetitiveness and whining tone. Her amusement park job in the sweltering weather digs forebodingly in Charlie’s conscious, too. Hot dogs and popcorn were effectively ruined for her after having to smell them for eight hours a day.

But right now? It’s 10am. Today is, blessedly, a day off. The new cassette she snagged yesterday is playing through her Walkman:  _ Skylarking, _ an endearingly British name that matches the endearingly British band to a T. From foam-and-plastic headphones croon liquid, rustic voices that sing about summer lovers, broken hearts, and God the ever-present yet intangible. The closeness of the folksy chorus in Charlie’s ears and the humanity of the music’s themes tint Charlie’s surroundings with an intimate and soft light.

Overhead, her ceiling fan’s blades stir through the thick air as if swimming in the humidity. As she stares up at the fan, mind pleasantly blank save for the soundtrack, Charlie feels herself relax a little. She’s been awake for an hour and hasn’t even thought about getting out of bed. It’s just so peaceful; warm, yellow-toned, sunny, summery, quiet and unmoving despite the buzzing of heat outside the window and in the air conditioner’s rattle.

The music seems to echo her thoughts: 

_ Please don’t pull me out, this is how I would want to go… _

Floating in the summer warmth of her room and on a lovely chorus, Charlie suddenly remembers: she is human. Almost surprised by the thought, Charlie glances down at her hands, at the callouses and little cuts on them from old, temperamental engines throwing tantrums. Even under close inspection, they’re a human’s hands, living and organic. But it’s only now that she feels they’re actually attached to her, that they’re not prosthetics or some astral projection. It’s been a long time since she’s felt real.

_ Please don’t heed my shout, I’m relaxed in the undertow… _

Until Bee, she hadn’t felt human. She’d let herself fade into a transparent apparition, a blurry afterimage of something moving quickly by, as she slid through her classes unseen. She winked out like a candle in a breeze when she got home from school, leaving the strange new people in her old parents’ roles staring at a puff of smoke, all trace of any living fire ashed and quiet, away from prying, pitying eyes. She’d waited to die like a ghost waiting to pass out of purgatory, or like waiting for a late bus, impatient and tired.

Until Bee. Bee was solid and tangible and a shade of yellow just this side of eye-burning, and he became an anchor for her and her stormy emotions. He may be a colossal war-machine on the surface, but he’s so  _ human _ , from his expressive blue optics to his jointed, mechanical hands, supposedly alien but strikingly similar to her own. His humanity is immense and even more pronounced with his decidedly non-human exterior. Charlie loves that about him: that contrast of inside and outside.

He has a soldier’s hands, battle-hewn and strong, with corded tendons that have the tensile strength to snap a bear’s neck – but they’re always gentle with her. Normally, anything Charlie could even slightly interpret as coddling would annoy her; make her bristle and snap with irritation. But with Bee, his gentleness feels like a promise: that she can be vulnerable and he would respect that vulnerability, not use it against her. When his hands freeze to let her clamber playfully over them like a playground; or when his hands boost her up to let her get something from a high shelf; the way he holds her always catches her attention. He holds her not like she’s made of cotton, but more like something to be preserved: like a museum exhibit, an artist’s magnum opus or a relic with meaning and power and history behind it.

She needs Bee, more than she’d like to admit. She looks down at her hands, flipping them from front to back and flexing her fingers like she's trying to regain feeling in them and watching the tendons stand against her skin. She knows she needs Bee.

_ Me, I’m floating round and round _

_ Like a bug in brandy, in this big bronze cup _

_ Drowning here in summer’s cauldron… _

Charlie tentatively rolls the idea of _needing_ Bee in her head and relaxes a little when she immediately recoil from it. Bee feels safe and constant. She can almost _feel_ Bee in the garage just below, somehow, his presence a physical feeling in her head. Of course, paranoia makes her constantly aware of his existence, but the connection she feels now is different. It’s sentimental in a way she hasn’t felt in a while; like with Dad, or with Mom before Dad died.

She watches the ceiling fan above and lets her thoughts dance around these ideas of connection and trust like moths around a lightbulb – a little anxious, a little hopeful. The fan whirls as the music transitions with a hair’s increase in tempo, transforming into a summery dance that sparkles in sound.

_ Laying on the grass, my heart, it flares like fire…  _

Charlie pushes her head farther back into her pillow and huffs out a sigh, feeling her room finally starting to heat as the sun pushes insistently through her window blinds. Rather than get out of bed, though, she rolls onto her side and looks at the slats of blue sky showing through the blinds. It’s a beautiful day to take Bee out and just go somewhere. Anywhere.

Charlie curls her hands around her Walkman and focuses on the feeling of the grey plastic, feeling just a bit at peace.


End file.
